Thank you both very much. Oliver, you first How close do you think we are to nuclear war right now?

That's why I came up here. Yes. Or down here. Yes. Just tell you I'm scared.

I'm really scared.

Welcome to Tucker Carlson Show. We bring you stories that have not been showcased anywhere else, and they're not censored, of course, because we're not gatekeepers. We are honest brokers here to tell you what we think you need to know and do it honestly. Check out all of our content at tucker carlson.com. Here's the episode.

I've been talking about it off and on since 2014 when the Ukraine thing happened. Yes. I was saying this is it's frankly like there's a lot of elements of World War 1, the alliances, the NATO alliance, and Yes. The United States' involvement, and its hatred for, Russia is astonishing to me. Considering the recent history, the last 20 20 years before that, there was no reason, for us to pick on Russia and go back to this cold war, neo cold war that we have.

That's what I don't understand, and I've been talking to Peter about it. It's it it defies logic because he says it's the neocons in Washington that started that we and they they never left. You know? They were always there. Prashinsky from the Carter days.

These are old arguments. I I heard them with my father who was a conservative, relatively conservative, in New York City back in 1950, that the Russians were going to invade us. And this was the very much the feeling that that McCarthy was saying they're in the schools, they're in the churches, they're in the but that's just it was such paranoia, and I think you know that now. You you grew up like like conservative too.

Yes.

You know, when did you start

to do conservative on on many things, but I I see no reason to be at war with Russia,

and I don't know why Russia would

be an enemy that they're

part of the west. It's shocking to me because what Biden did, and I voted for him in 2018, he never talked about changing the Russia policy. Yes. He never did. He never gave us any kind of knowledge of education about what he was thinking, but he seems to be all and out all out cold warrior.

I mean, everything he's done has been to antagonize him. In fact, he called he called the president of Russia a thug and a murderer before he got elected, So he hasn't been very diplomatic

No. I would say not.

About it.

It must be strange for you to to have grown up in the Democratic party The Republican party. Oh, right. But, I mean, as an adult, to see the party that was the party of peace and reconciliation become the war

Everything has turned around. Everything has turned around. With Peter, we were talking last night, and, Peter was my coauthor on Untold History of the United States. And we've been talk he he taught me a lot of this history because he specializes in it for many years. But here we are with this situation where Democrats want want war.

They push war. They're pushing the strategy of weakening Russia Yes. Which is a self defeating, suicidal strategy. What's the purpose of it? What did they do to us?

What did they do? I don't understand. I don't understand. What did they do to hurt us? And what has Ukraine to do with that distance for us to do this involvement with NATO?

This NATO, also, for me as a half European, my mother was French, I spent time in Europe as a kid. What I've seen is a huge change in Europe. That's what's terrifying to me. Why? The people don't want war, but the EU, which is this political over overrider, seems to want war.

And because the leadership in the EU is very elite. People who seem to come from the same school, factory, or whatever they produce by. They they seem to think the same way that Russia is going to invade Europe again, that we're back to that World War 2 argument, which was nonsense in the first place. Yes. So here, Ukraine Russia wants Ukraine, and then they're gonna go for Poland.

That's what, Kamala Harris said at 1 point. That's Yes. The the stupidest statement I've ever heard, I think, from a political leader. Just ignorant. No education.

No history.

What do you think accounts for, big picture, the hostility of NATO and Europe to Russia? What is that?

It's got to be education. It's gotta be propaganda. This they believe these things. The woman who runs the EU, Ursula, she constantly says these things that are ignorant ignorant of what's happened in the last 20, 30 years, ignorant of what happened in the nineties in Russia. She's just they're not taking this into account.

I talked to Macron at 1 point, and he was a very reasonable man. I thought he was saying things like we need more nuclear energy in France. Right. Great. And now he turns around, and he's saying that Putin was he's ready to send French troops into Ukraine.

The British are the worst, Starmer. This prime min this new prime minister, Labor prime minister, you know who he is. He's quite he said, yes 2 days ago, he said, we have to we have to punish Putin to the maximum because he's relentless. That's what he said. We have to punish.

So there's a an aspect of personal a personal thing about Putin. Like, Biden made it personal saying that he can get a thug and a murderer, and, and Starmer saying he has to be punished. Putin has to be punished, not Russia. It's bizarre. We didn't talk like this back when we were mature, back in the fifties, sixties when we talked about Russia as an enemy because we thought it was adversarial.

Yes.

I agree I disagree with that, but we thought so and we acted as such, but we didn't personally insult Khrushchev or Brezhnev. Of course. And here we are insulting them constantly. So Biden, I think, is is some people say, Blinken has taken control of his mind. I don't know.

But Anthony Blinken is is trained in the Hillary Clinton diplomatic school. He was for many years, he's been under her wing. Yes. So is, gather, Jake Sullivan.

Diplomatic is a little strong. By diplomacy, it's just, you know, regime change. Kill the leader you you disagree with.

Diplomacy is a dirty word now in the United States. Okay.

So so but, Peter, I'm interested in your perspective. Like, why do you think the entire United States from a position of greater weakness has, with Europe, pivoted against Russia of all the potential enemies? Why Russia?

What else is new? Right. We've been going after Russia since 1917. We got we're mad at them. Well, in World War 1, Lenin and Trotsky pulled Russia out of the alliance and had the Treaty of Brest Litovsk Yes.

Where they gave away a massive amount of Russia to Germany in order to get peace at that point. And what does the United States do with the Brits and the Japanese and others? We send troops into the Soviet Union in 1918. There were 15,000 American troops there, and Churchill wanted to overthrow the new Soviet government. He said we should strangle Bolshevism in the cradle.

So this goes way back to then. We didn't even recognize the Soviet Union till Roosevelt was in power in 1933. So and then during the war, they became our ally.

Yes.

And in fact, they were the ones who won the war in Europe.

Correct.

But I asked my students who won the war in Europe, you know, people grew up believing that the Americans won the war in Europe. It's not true. It's not even close to the truth. We certainly contributed a lot during World War 2. But the Soviets, throughout most of World War 2, the US and the Britain were con confronting 10 German divisions between the 2 of us, while the Soviets were confronting more than 200 German divisions on their own.

That's why, that that's why everybody understood what Kennedy says in his great 1963 American University commencement address. What the Soviets suffered in World War 2 is the equivalent of the entire United States east of Chicago having been wiped out. You know? So you would think that we would be friendly with them afterwards, and Roosevelt had a vision for that. In fact, Roosevelt promised Stalin in May of 1942 that we would open up the second front before the end of 1942.

He asked Stalin to send over Molotov and a trusted general for that meeting in the White House in 1942, and we made that promise. We don't open up the second front till June of 44. And by that point, we had lost all the diplomatic initiative. The Soviets had were defeating Germany largely on their own with the support of US materiel. And so they were pushing back the Germans over Central Europe and Eastern Europe.

And so the idea that Roosevelt gave away anything at Yalta that the Soviets did already have is nonsense. The Soviets had that area, and that was 40 that's 44, 45. Then, unfortunately, Roosevelt died, and even more unfortunately, Truman became president instead of Henry Wallace, which is another story I hope we can get into because Oliver and I do a lot of about that in untold history. And we argue that had Wallace become president on April 12, 45 1945, instead of Truman, there would have not only been no atomic bombings in World War 2, there would have likely been no Cold War. History could have been so so different.

But instead, we developed this enmity toward the Soviet Union. Instead of seeing that our allies who suffered so greatly and showing some largesse and generosity, we begin to vilify them after that. And the crackdown that happens in Eastern Europe doesn't happen immediately. That takes place over the next couple years. It's a much gradual process.

They allowed a good degree of democracy in most of Eastern Europe till, really, the, the Truman, doctrine, 1947, really. And then after that, then the cold war is on. And and but Kennedy was the 1 who saw it differently. I mean, he'd go into that too. Anyway, I give you a lot of history very, very quickly.

None of that, is surprising, but none of it, I would say, accounts for the shift after the the 1 that Oliver referred to after 2014 at Maidan.

But actually starts earlier because we when the Soviet Union collapsed 1989, 1990, 1991 during that period, we had a chance to actually reach out in a more more positive way. But it's in 1990 that Charles Krauthammer, the neocon theorist, says the Soviet Union has collapsed, says this is America's unipolar moment. He says we're the only force in the world that can dom dictate world events, and he said the unipolar moment is likely the last 30 or 40 years. It was in 1992 that we've come out with a defense planning guidance, which is a much more elaborate plan of how we're gonna dominate the world. And then, 1997, the project for a new American century takes shape, and that really fleshes it out much greater.

And they say in that 2,000 report that we'll not be able to rebuild at our defenses as quickly as we want unless we have a new Pearl Harbor. And they got that in 2001 with 911. And so then we invade Afghanistan, then Krauthammer revisits

Let me ask you the part. Do you think the people who said that we need a new Pearl Harbor in order to rebuild how do you think they felt about 911?

I think they saw it as a tragedy and an opportunity. You know? I think they were

So you're not suggesting they knew about it?

No. I'm not suggesting that. And all of a sudden,

I think it's a mystery.

In what sense?

I think it's a mystery. I don't think it's solved. No. Because the because all the events of 911 have not come out. No.

They haven't. Why do you think that is? I, I would have to really study this, but it's just so many questions I have. So many this this is not the subject today, but Yes. It leads to this feeling that there's a cabal or something in Washington that has been there kind of.

A strange, ghost like cabal that goes back to the sixties with Kennedy's murder Yes. That continues in some strange embodiment today. And don't ask. It sounds it sounds like it, but it's a a strange concept. But I you have to think about it.

Well, we can't assess it because the files are still classified 23 years later.

There's a story about conspiracies now. I mean, it all the a lot of the lunatics have gone out of the asylum, no doubt. Yes. But there's a lot out there in the public that really should be examined and questioned and Yes. Asked.

And it's that's what's the establishment's freaking out because it's we're overloading it. You know, we're it's running over the rapids now. They can't defend them anymore. Yes. I mean, there's a sentence Well, you

were you were once derided as a conspiracy. I I don't I don't think so anymore.

I'm I but I'm still alive. You've you've

you've lived to see your own vindication.

Well, yeah, in a sense. I mean, I'd love to see Kennedy understood better by the mass because, you know, you still hear this silly Lee Harvey Oswald did it stuff. You know what I mean? It it then he allegedly you know, they never said alleged. You know?

Alleged killer. Yes. I always say killer. But, you know, those are I feel sorry that that happened, but that's a bigger story now. It's a bigger story because now it's the world is at stake.

It's not the life of 1 man. He had a vision, as Peter said, of humanizing Russia, bringing them into the world community. That was defeated when he was killed. That was very badly defeated. Khrushchev fell shortly thereafter, the the premier of Russia.

He fell too because he wasn't sufficiently strong with the United States. Both men He caved

in during the Cuban Missile Crisis. So his hawks wanted to get rid of him for being too weak. But, let me go back to what Oliver's saying because in October of 1962, right after the missile crisis, 2 weeks later, Khrushchev writes an incredible letter to Kennedy in which he says, from evil, some good must come. Our people have both felt the burning flames of thermonuclear war. We have to use this now to eliminate every conflict between us that could lead to a new crisis.

And Kennedy and Khrushchev slowly on Kennedy's part, more rapidly on Khrushchev's, They began working together in 63. Norman Cousins was the intermediary, and he met with Khrushchev twice and made it clear that the United States really did wanna have a peaceful reconciliation and had Kennedy live. I mean, his AU commencement address that I mentioned is, I think, the most important presidential address of the 20th century.

You flesh that out a little bit, his last big speech he gave before he was murdered?

1 of them.

Great speech.

What did he say?

Well and and Norman Cousins came back from Russia and said, Khrushchev needs some obvious signal that you're serious. And so and he's and Norman Cousins actually wrote the first draft, and then Kennedy took it. And, and they didn't let the CIA, the state department, or the Pentagon even see it beforehand, which is why Kennedy was able to it was called the the strategy for peace speech. And he's what he says there, among other things, is that the relation between the US and Soviets is tragic. Why should we be enemies?

Why should we see them as enemies? What Kennedy could do, and he does in that speech, is see the world through the eyes of America's adversaries. When was the last time we had a leader who could do that? I I mean, Carter maybe for a minute, Obama maybe for a minute, but almost but nobody else. So what what what Kennedy says is so relevant to today.

He says, to put a nuclear adversary in a position of either suffering a humiliating defeat or using nuclear weapons is either a colossal failure of statesmanship or a collective death wish for humanity, which is exactly what Biden is doing at this point.

We face right now. Yeah. So how was that speech received?

It wasn't as appreciated as it is now. It should be read. How

was it received in Washington?

Oh, I would think a lot of people didn't like it because they saw him as some kind of idealistic fruitcake. Yes. I really think so. Certainly, he'd fired Dulles, and he followed the top people at the CIA. But I think there's a deeper people in economic activity also were upset with him because there were changes in the economics of the play.

The democrats were gearing up for the future. They were gonna win the next election. That second, second term was very important, and they had a 3rd term possibility with Robert Kennedy and a 4th term possibility with Teddy Kennedy. It was a possibility of another Roosevelt. That was what's terrifying to the Republicans, I think, certainly to my father.

And, I I and I think that ties in. You were asked earlier why, you know, why? And I'm I'm racking my brain, but I go back to my father who was a sock broker, a very good 1, and he he was intellectually wrote about it. To him, it was it goes back to the World War 1 again to this concept of they changed their system. They broke the rule, the international the rules bay the rules based order was changed because now Yes.

There's not only did they break the treat they no secret treaties was 1 of the first things they did, and all these treaties from World War 1 came out. The secret treaties that France, England had signed before the war. So that was you see, that came out, and, the German treaties came out. So that was but it was economic in the sense that in the United States, we had a lot of strikes going on domestically. We'd had strikes going on since the 18 seventies.

And there was a a worldwide sentiment for revolution in the workers' socialist, socialist movement. It infected France. It infected England. I mean, it's well known, and Germany was very much, moving towards a a workers' revolution. Yeah.

So the Premature. That was the most scary thing to Woodrow Wilson. It was the Russians are gonna destabilize the whole world, and Churchill was right there. He wasn't a leader, but, certainly, the English felt the same way. They were the leaders of World War 1, so they they they had a a stake in getting rid of Russia.

That's why the Starmer's recent comment the other day about punishing Putin to the maximum is very striking to me. The British have led the charge against Russia forever.

But that gets back to 1990 NATO expansion. And then in 1997, Brzezinski lays it out in his book, The Grand Chessboard, which Fife and Libya and Hadley were also writing about just at the same time. And what Brzezinski says in The Grand Chessboard is that if you can separate Ukraine from Russia, then Russia will never be a Eurasian superpower again. They had a strategy for doing exactly what they did for quite some time before that. This is not something that they just slowed up in 2014.

Do you ever feel like you can't trust the things you hear or read like every news source is hollow, distorted, or clearly just propaganda lying to you? Well, you're not imagining it. If the last few years have proven anything, it's that legacy media exists to distort the truth and to control you, to gatekeep information from the public instead of letting you know what's actually going on. They don't want you to know. But there is, however, a publication that fights this that is not propaganda, 1 that we read every month and have for many years is called in Primus.

It's from Hillsdale College in Michigan, and Primus is a free speech digest that features some of the best minds in the country addressing the questions that actually matter, the ones that are not addressed in the Washington Post or NBC News. The best part of it, it is free. No cost whatsoever. No strings attached. They just send it to you.

Hillsdale will send in Primus right to your house. No charge. All you gotta do is ask. Go to Tucker for Hillsdale dotcom and subscribe for free today. That's Tucker for Hillsdale dotcom.

The only way this stays a democracy is if the citizenry is informed. You can't fight tyranny if you don't know what's going on. And Primus helps. It's free. Don't wait.

Sign up now.

Don Junior here, guys. Are you receiving letters from the IRS claiming you owe back taxes? As penalties and interest fees pile up, the IRS gives you no clear path to resolution. Don't speak to them on your own. They are not your friends.

To reach a team of licensed tax professionals that can help you reduce, settle, and resolve your tax matters, go to tnusa.com and check them out. Solve your tax problems today. Call 1-800-780-8888 or visit tnusa.com. That's 1-800-780-8888.

So, Oliver, you know Putin as well as any American or you spend at least as much time with him as any, living American. Characterize what he's like,

if you would. Yeah. I I might just when I finish my point Of course. Yeah. It's complicated.

I just we're talking about why. I just feel the economics are crucial to understand in the sense that the fear of, Russian revolution affecting American workers was gigantic. Workers started to immigrate to Russia in the 19 twenties to work there. Conditions were supposed to be better. We talk about it in the book.

And America was moving away from the capitalist ideal that existed. I think that plays a huge role coming after World War 2, Also, after World War 1, we of course, there's that World War 1 leads to World War 2 in my mind, but let's jump to World War 2. After World War 2, they were terrified. The Republicans were terrified that the Depression would return. The Depression had been a horrible experience for many Americans.

They were poor. They had nothing. They were terrified that it would come again. Yeah. So the whole concept started up in the congress of 45 with the Republicans turning winning.

They had they won a lot of seats. Right?

46. Yeah.

And they're talking about an economy, a war economy all of a sudden, like keeping people at full employment. What are we gonna do with all these men coming back? Yes. And and the women have taken their jobs. We gotta keep people working.

So we're gonna get into this military business, and that's what we did off and on. We did it through the era of up to where Eisenhower says in 1960. You know, he's built the greatest nuclear force and army of all time because in 1960, we have how many warheads?

We had a 185 ICBMs, and the Russians had 4.

Yeah. Yeah. But I'm talking about in 1960 when Kennedy comes up And

we increase it by a 1,000. And the joint chiefs the air force wanted 10,000. Joint chiefs wanted 3,000, I think it was. And McNamara said the lowest number we can get away with is 1,000. So that's but from the Soviet perspective, they saw the United States was already ahead between 10 to 1 and a 100 to 1 in every category, and now they see us adding a 1000 more ICBMs.

So the Kremlin interpreted it that the US was preparing for a first strike against the Soviet Union, which is part of the reason why they put the missiles into Cuba to try to offset that, at least, to some degree. You know? But, again, you know, Kennedy got a briefing on July 20, 1961 about a a a secret advanced preemptive strike, nuclear strike to wipe out the Soviet Union.

And China.

And and Kennedy walked out of that midway through the briefing, and he's turned to Dean Rusk and said, and we call ourselves the human race. He Levenshur gave it, and 1 of the people there said I think it was Roswell Gappatrick says he gave it as if he was talking to kindergartners, and Kennedy was so disgusted with it. And he's thinking behind the idea that we were gonna they have a preemptive surprise nuclear strike unprovoked against the Soviet Union, but there are military people who were thinking that way as there are today. I mean, the the, Bulletin Atomic Scientists had an article on August 20th. There were 2 interesting articles.

Sanger had 1 in the New York Times that day saying that the United States is preparing to fight a 3 front nuclear war against Russia, China, and North Korea and win that. And the same day, the Bully Atomic scientists came out with an article saying that there is still planners in the Pentagon who believe that we can win a nuclear war and should plan for that. What would that mean

to win a nuclear war?

It's insanity. It doesn't mean anything.

Well, that's why you should read this book. It's very important because there is this Annie Jacobson's book. Partial reward. There's no partial victory in this book. It's impossible.

Once it gets it's a chain reaction once this thing starts. There are so many different aspects to it. It's a bureaucracy beyond belief. The names all the names of all the systems we have protecting ourselves. 1 thing, it's it's clockwork.

It's so rare if if this if it hang we don't have a a fail safe is what I'm trying to say. We really don't.

So what does it look like once the chain reaction begins?

Oh, she describes it beautifully minute by minute. She talks about what's gonna happen to you, me, and forget about Los Angeles. Forget about New York. Forget those they're gone.

Pentagon has been trying to war game limited nuclear war for decades, and it never ends up at a limited nuclear war. You know, what point does it stop? It always keeps going till the everything's gone.

And then you didn't take that. Or something we discovered in what year? And then

when well, Sagan came up with the idea in the early eighties.

Early eighties.

Winter. But they if anything and then he got attacked by the Wall Street Journal and others for bad science, which is bullshit. And but the the latest scientific findings are that Sagan and company actually downplayed the effects of nuclear

is nuclear winter? Nuclear winter,

for example, now, the latest studies show that a limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan

Yes.

In which 100 Hiroshima sized nuclear weapons would be used, which would could push 5,000,000 tons of smoke, soot, and debris into the atmosphere. It would circle the stratosphere within 2 weeks, block the sun's rays from getting to the earth. Temperatures would plummet to freezing on the earth. Much of the agriculture would be destroyed, and a limited nuclear war of a 100 Hiroshima sized weapons could kill up to 2,000,000,000 people. 2,000,000,000.

If there was a we don't have a 100. We've got 12,000, and they're not Hiroshima size. Many of them are 7 to 70 times the size of the Hiroshima bomb. And so if there was a large scale use, it would the cities would would burn and would send up so much soot that would block the sun's rays for years, and we might not survive as a species. The likelihood is that all large life forms would probably die off.

Some people might be able to get under the ground, you know, would have a mineshaft

gap like it's Range Left.

That was the idea in in failsafe. Kubrick didn't know anything about nuclear winter when he was he did the movie, but he had the underground system being described by the doctor Strangelove. Remember? Yes. By the way, you should I I did a clip.

I showed Strangelove to Putin. Doctor, doctor Strangelove. I showed it to I wanted him to sit through that climax to

Had he seen it before?

He's

no. He never heard of it, I don't think. And he sat through it with me, and it's on film. His reaction is, yes. This is very realistic.

Yeah. It could happen, but now our weapons are even much bigger, much bigger.

Much worse. Yeah.

But he was he said, yeah. This is real.

Although back in the sixties, we're actually building bigger nuclear weapons than we aren't today. It was the Russians tested the 50 megaton weapon, the Tsar Bomba, and it could have been a 100 megatons if they'd wanted to. Underground? I'm not sure if it was an underground test.

So what do you think Putin's view of nuclear war is?

He he knows. He's a very realistic man. This is serious. When he he talk he doesn't he doesn't bullshit. He talks very straightforwardly, and I think that's we don't understand that.

Our language is a little more rhetorical than his. Yes. He's he's pretty, consistent. He said this is a red line in Ukraine, and he always has has maintained that, and he went to war for it.

The red line being NATO up against his war.

Russian minority in in Ukraine. They they moved into Donbas. Donbas and, Luhansk were the issues at that time. Now that was that was what was at stake. Yes.

They promised the Ukrainians promised to convince 1 and next to they promised to respect the autonomy of those people. They never did. They were started killing them. And that that there was the terrorism be Ukraine changed in, 14 after Maidan. It became truly a dangerous country because they had a lot of zealots in the government.

They weren't they weren't, Nazis, but they were a lot of people like that who were working with the Ukrainians and and terrifying the Russians. But but I I mean, we I'm I know you saw my movie. I we've been in Ukraine in winter. Ukraine it's about that Maidan and how these people got into power. That was a violation of the neutrality of Ukraine, which had existed since the end of the Cold War.

It's a sad story because we wanted it. It was our entree. We didn't we Obama said we want neutrality. We want this and that. We wanna have a good relationship.

And meanwhile, he betrayed it. He betrayed it with the the my dad broke into violence. I don't know if you know all the details, but there was a lot of killing of the the protesters. And the evidence is really pointing heavily to the, neo fascists there who came in and shot these people from these rooftops that were controlled by the the Ukrainian side. So It's a very, sad story.

Let me take

it back just a little bit. Because in 2008, that's when the United States called for Ukraine and Georgia to enter NATO. Right. And that was clearly crossing Russia's red line. In fact, our then US ambassador to Russia was William Burns, now the head of the CIA.

Burns writes a secret memo back to the White House titled niet means niet. Don't cross Russia's red lines about Ukraine in in NATO, and that's where things begin to change. Putin was furious. He actually came into the NATO meeting and was had been reaching out to the US since 911. I mean, he was the first foreign leader to actually contact the White House and to offer assistance.

And he did help us in you in Afghanistan originally. And then what do we do in 2002? We abandon the ABM Treaty. He was that would that was a horrible blow to them. Then we invade Iraq, which they were totally opposed to, and so then the relations begin to deteriorate.

But I was saying before about Krauthammer. In 2002, he revisits the idea of the unipolar moment, said I was wrong in 1990. It's not the unipolar moment. It's the unipolar era, and the US is gonna dominate the world for the foreseeable future. Could be a 100 years, not 30 or 40 years.

And that's when they all the neocons started coming out of the fray they started appearing everywhere and saying the importance of American empire, that we're gonna reach we're gonna change the chessboard. When Wesley Clark went to the Pentagon, they told them we had plans to to have regime change in 7 different countries. Yes. And what was on that list? Iraq, Iran, Syria?

Libya. Syria. Yeah. I mean, you go through

Iran. Yeah.

And so that was the game plan. What's happening now in Syria was part of a game plan.

And Iran was the last

That there was

a big crowd. Iran surprise of all was Iran.

Air, Sudan, Somalia. They had a lot of different countries we were gonna overturn, and they had this vision that we could do it. The on January 5, 2003, the New York Times Sunday Magazine section, big headline, American Empire, get used to it. I mean, they weren't even hiding it. They were proud about it at that point until things started to go haywire in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And and then finally Libya.

Libya is a little older. Include Serbia. Go back to 99.

Well, yeah, the Russians were furious about what happened in Serbia.

Can can I ask, not to digress, but what was the point of the intervention in Serbia, the post Yugoslav interventions?

The we we announced it as we're we were catching the butchers, the people who were dictators in Serbia. Yeah. And, that was our excuse. But, essentially, it was a much more important desalination of we bombed a city in Europe. Yes.

Belgrade for 99 days. I mean, think about it. We came into the war and called it it's it's a complicated war. There were 2 peace treaties. Don't have time here to go into it.

But, essentially, we wanted to balkanize Yugoslavia, which we did

Yes.

The same way we're gonna balkanize Syria now. Yes. This is American policy. You divide, conquer, divide, conquer. Balkanize it.

Cut it up into Kosovo was a violation at the deepest level of everything we're talking about. We talk about the rules based order.

Yes.

They had a a referendum that is that is was a little bit, shady, and we we said they're free. You know? They can they they're they're no longer part of Serbia. They're kinda Kosovo was a gangster state. What became it's a whole I was there.

I don't know. I can't tell you. It's grim what happened to that.

What's interesting, though, is as that was happening and NATO was bombing and Wes Clark was becoming famous and all that, I don't think I heard a single debate in the United States over why we were doing this.

Did we?

Not much. No. But in Russia, you would have heard it very, very different. Something like 96% of the Russians thought that what was going on there was a war crime.

Yes. I mean,

the Russians were totally opposite view, and the US was establishing the rules based international order, which meant instead of going through the United Nations, which they couldn't have gotten it through, they

did it on their own. Militarily.

Yes. And don't forget, in Iraq, when we went in there, Germany, France, and Russia did not join, they did not agree with that. Schroeder and Oh, Europe. Iraq. It's important because what's happened now is the opposite.

France and Germany are are all the UK

leading the charge. So there's been

a change in values, and you say where? I don't know why. I think there's some kind of NATO is not the 1, but it's sort of an elitism that has come into being with in Europe, an elitism of the leaders coming from a university where they're they're trained to be leaders, but they all think alike. That's what surprises me. I don't frankly, Farage, whatever he says, he's different.

At least he says something. He's different. Le Pen says something different.

Yes.

So that's why these people are appealing to people because they're saying there has to be some peace. There this is madness.

And it's why they're the most attacked.

That's part of it too. The media is in on it, and they're very, very critical of people who who differ. In this country, you've noticed the censorship has gotten far where you you suffered from it.

Yeah. Well, certainly,

I suffered from it. I mean, it's you're you're insulated because you have a tenure. But

How many Oscars have you won?

I won 3. You've won 3 Oscars. Long time ago. Right. No.

But, essentially, I got cut off because I did the Poon interviews didn't help me in in Hollywood.

But you'd been cut off before then, I think, hadn't you?

No. My my ability to make films was choked a little. You know, there is a after 2000, things changed in the United States because we became the victim. We were suddenly the patriotism of the soldiers. We started Pearl Harbor, black ship Black Hawk Down.

All the films were were different mentality than what I was presenting, which was a reality, I thought, to the American public. That this military has to be why are we doing these military expeditions overseas? This is like in Vietnam. This is what was my main point. I kept going at it and going at it, and I guess all of a sudden it became okay.

But the people never voted. There was no candidate. There was no election that said I'm against any empire. I wanna bring it back like back in William Brennan's William Jennings Bryan's back in 18/98. I don't want empire.

We never got the choice.

We we swallowed it. Let me give a different timeline on Oliver's history that I

Yes.

I see. If I mean, Oliver was walking on water in Hollywood with platoon, Wall Street, born on the 4th July. Yep. And then he made JFK, and then everything changed. And they start attacking JFK 7, 8 months before the film was produced I remember.

Based on a stolen first draft of the script at at at the New York Times, Los Angeles Times.

Washington Post, all that.

They were they were all going after him. And a conspiracy theorist, and, you know, and it's a very controversial movie, which takes a lot of risks. And Oliver said admitted at the time he didn't have all the answers, but he wanted to get the questions out there and make people think about some of these issues. But at that point, he went from being Hollywood's golden boy to being the conspiracy monger.

I remember it very well. And the late night comics were always tools of the existing order jumped in. But why do you think that film and that topic I mean

Because Americans had already disagreed with the Warren Commission.

Yes.

And even before Oliver's movie came out, the overwhelming majority of Americans thought didn't think that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. They didn't, from the very beginning, find that credible at all. In fact, 4 of the 7 members of the warrant commission didn't think that or thought that there was likely a second Yes. Second gun.

Nor Robert Kennedy, nor Lyndon Johnson. Yeah.

Connolly.

Jackie Kennedy. There's so many people. Hale Boggs, Fidel Castro, Charles de Gaulle, various British leaders, Harold Macmillan.

Did you ever talk to Castro? You knew Castro.

Yeah. Sure. What did he say about it? Oh, it's he was so sad because he really was like Kennedy, and he was hoping for a deal. They were in backdoor negotiations.

Kennedy understood the Cuban revolution, and he said eloquent about it. He understood why the people were that Cuba had been the most corrupt island in the American empire and the Caribbean since the platinum in 2001 19 o 1.

19 yeah.

But this a lot of this is economic. Let's not lose sight of that. You see, what they got after World War 2 was an economic empire, which is it was working. People were investing in the war economy, and they were prosperous. Yes.

But you saw the budgets grew and grew and grew. Here we are now with a $1,000,000,000,000 defense budget. Right? Which is insane because we have how many bases abroad, 800 bases. That was never the intention of Eisenhower or any of those people to have to control the world, to dominate every place in the world.

But this is Asia and Europe. But can and South America. This is a gigantic empire. Do you realize how busy they are every day trying to run this thing? Everything is coming.

I personally, I believe there's an invasion coming up. It's either gonna be Iran or I hope not. Israel is a proxy army for us. Certainly, Trump supports them. You know that.

Trump supports Trump is very zealous about Israel. Scary. But, also, don't overlook Venezuela, which is still the 1 of the richest countries in the world with all its oil. Some people believe that is an easy easy target for for Trump to knock off. I pray not because it's gonna be a battle.

But this doesn't end is what I'm saying. They plot every day. They they have some imagine the world map. You got the China the China challenge. Right?

Sending ships constantly stating our supremacy right in the war in the seas, freedom

of the seas. Navigation.

And China, is it's it's crazy. I mean, I understand economically. Take it on. Be competitive with China. Fine.

But this we can be economically friendly. We in other words, we can be competitors. I don't see why we can't be in business together as with Russia. Russia was a capitalist country. It's no longer a communist country.

Yes. So as much as we hate communism, it doesn't make sense to to antagonize Russia. They can be our partners in climate change in so many ways. Their nuclear energy industry is 1 of the best in the world as is China. They can teach us.

We can build SMRs in quantity if we wanted to. We can really solve climate change. We don't have to sit here victims of it, but this is all this is Kennedy thinking. This is what we need. We need leadership.

We need a a de Gaulle, somebody who has a vision of the world. Trump, to some degree, has a vision.

Oliver is stressing the economic roots of all this.

I do. Yes.

I wanted to go back because in 1948, George Kennan lays it out. In a secret memo, George Kennan, who was the architect of the Cold War, writes a memo that says, we have 6.3% of the world's population, yet we control 50% of the world's wealth. He said, the challenge before us today is to maintain this position of disparity, and we're not gonna do it with idealistic slogans. We're gonna do with pure power concepts. He later regretted that.

He later regretted the mister x article, and and he becomes really very, very worried about the threat of nuclear war in his later life, and he lived to over a 100 years old.

But, you know In 97, he condemned he condemned Clinton Condemned

the NATO expansion for sure.

In 99, Clinton spared the NATO. Yeah. And, Kenan was horrified. Horrified.

So we're already meeting here at TCN the other day, and I looked around the room, and every other person had a kind of ruddy vitality, her pink cheeks, alertness, bright eyes, full mental acuity, and a cheerfulness you could almost smell. And I asked, why does everyone look so good? And part of the answer, of course, is they like what we do for a living. It's really interesting. We think it's important.

But another reason everyone looks so good is because they'd all had a great night sleep. I'm not making this up. Almost everybody here uses a new sleep technology from a company called Eat Sleep. They sent it to us, and everyone here loves it. It's called the pod.

It's a high-tech mattress cover effectively that you add to your existing bed. You don't need a new bed or anything like that. You just throw this over what you have. What it does is adjust the temperature of your bed, warmer or cooler depending on what you want, and it maintains an ideal sleeping environment all night long. So I didn't know this, but as you progress through different phases of sleep, your body's needs change.

An 8 Sleep automatically keeps things exactly where they should be in the sweet spot through the entire night. It's been proven to increase the quality of your sleep, the amount you sleep every night. It improves your recovery time from physical exertion, and it may even improve your cognitive performance and enhance enhance your overall health. It seems to be doing that in our office. So it learns and adapts to your sleep patterns over time and automatically adjust temperatures throughout the night through each phase of sleep, and it does this independently for each sleeper on either side of the bed.

That's pretty cool. So you can sleep well and feel much better and be more effective the next morning as we are here. Try it for yourself. Go to 8 sleep.com/tucker. Use the promo code Tucker to get an extra $350 off the Pod 4 Ultra.

You can try with 0 obligation for a month, and if you don't like it, just send it back. Again, that's 8 sleep.com/tucker. Better sleep today and look great in your morning meetings as our guys do. Yeah. But but you're you're arguing that it's more than just economics that

are driving this.

Economics? It's geopolitics? Economics. Military ideological domination? I don't think it's an either or.

Some people make that mistake and say it's this or it's that. I mean, there are a lot of different people involved in the planning of this, and they're motivated by different things.

No. I I say that was the original reason we were antagonistic to Russia. Yes. It wasn't military. It was economic.

Because we've had strikes in this country, and we were trying to control labor. And the the large corporations were in a dead a deathly struggle with with labor. And up until the end of World War 2, Taft Hartley, that was a big issue. There were so many strikes during the war. People don't even take them into account.

There were there was a huge strikes in Detroit, cars, steel. And after the war, it was continuing and until Taft Hartley came along, which allowed them to close down any strike that was dangerous to the national security, I think.

But in the thirties, that's what motivated Roosevelt's turn to the left.

So the Cold War comes out of economics too. It's very much so.

The the labor movement was huge in the United States in the thirties. The formation of the CIO, the organizing of steel, auto. I mean, all of the big industries were were organizing. And who were the leaders of the organizing? The communists.

You know? There was a reason why they had to shut down the Communist Party during the, quote, unquote, McCarthy period. And McCarthy is a latecomer to McCarthyism, but right it starts in 47. And and Truman, according to Clark Clifford, his main domestic policy adviser, Truman they said, Truman knew that this was baloney, all this stuff about communist infiltration, but the Republicans started to attack in 1946. The the chair of the Republican party in 46 says the choice between republicanism and communism, and and so we're beginning this anticommunist hysteria very, very early after the war.

And then Truman takes the bait and has the, loyalty hearings and and that which leads gradually into McCarthyism. So first in 47, first, they say that the real threat is the atomic scientists, but they quickly decide that the 1 they're gonna investigate first is Hollywood. Right? So then they they they have the the Hollywood 10 and and then all those other hearings that were taking place, because they were very concerned even then about people who might influence American thinking. And Hollywood was a hotbed of leftist.

Kind of an irony though that Oliver Stone, after winning 3 Oscars, would be excommunicated from Hollywood by the same people

Yeah. For Foxconn. I didn't get excommunicated yet. Please don't don't don't don't don't.

That you would be even vigorously criticized is a little strange.

No. It's very hard for me. I mean, a military type theme, these kind of things I'm talking about with you, I couldn't do this as a movie now. I could do the Putin interviews because that was a documentary. Yes.

And, I I could do nuclear energy because I cared about that. That was a documentary, pro nuclear energy. So this I'm interested in ideas, but in terms of drama, I have to curb it. I I can't go to where my imagination wants to go. Why?

What do they say to you? They never tell you the truth. They tell you, too controversial, too too, too political, too this, too that. You know? I don't think I've lost my touch, but I have to live with it.

It's okay. I live with it. I'm writing a book, another book. I wrote a book or a memoir, a first part of my life. I'm gonna write another 1 from 40 on, from the age of 40 to wherever I am now.

So are there any filmmakers left in Hollywood who can take on the biggest questions, like the power of the

That's what I'm saying. They they don't take on the Oppenheimer is an interesting movie. I liked it as a movie. I loved it. There are some flaws in it.

You know? The big flaw being that Truman is is is honestly pictured knocking Oppenheimer. Remember that? That's a great scene in the movie. But, what what's ignored in the film is, for example, general Groves.

Leslie Groves is 1 of the most anti communist, generals we ever had. A total cold warrior from beginning to end. He said, quote, you the quote's in the in the book. From the beginning, the Manhattan Project was created to destroy to address the Roman the Russian empire. You know the line?

Yeah. Of course. Nothing more. It was it was not about Japan. It was about Russia.

It says from Yes. 2 weeks after the time I was appointed to head the Manhattan Project, I treated as if the Soviets were the enemy and that the the project was directed in that way.

And then so the bombing in Japan was really aimed as a message to the Soviets?

Well, yeah, the Russians were in the war at that time. They we knew that Japan was finished, but we had to keep going in those crucial few days to establish the the weapon. And, Leslie Groves I mean, Matt Damon played him, very good performance, but I don't know.

It's not Leslie Groves.

It's not Leslie Groves.

That's the most warm and fuzzy Leslie Groves you're ever gonna see.

And it doesn't go into the issue of whether why we Oppenheimer. I don't know. I'm sure Oppenheimer got an inkling of it later. No? Yes.

At the time

Yeah. But he said that when he testified, he said, we didn't know beans about the military situation. We didn't know that Japan could have been made to surrender without using the bomb. You know? So Oppenheimer later effectively apologized for supporting the use of the bomb.

Yeah. And then he got into trouble. That's when

he he really

he was in trouble. To When he opposed the

development of hydrogen bomb.

Once you cross the Rubicon, you have to cross.

So speaking of your cross the Rubicon, yes, I I have crossed it. But when you came back, from interviewing Putin for your documentary, it was released, what was the reaction like Quiet. In LA?

People, they don't talk to me publicly. They it's almost behind closed doors. Right?

Did you hesitate before doing it?

Not really because it was fascinating. New material my producer set up. No. I was doing Snowden in 2013, which was a very brave movie because we're dealing with a man who was exiled, who I thought was a hero and was treated

I agree.

As if he was a traitor. So I wanted to make that movie. In making that movie, I had to go to Moscow to finish it, and I met Putin there. And we talked about Snowden first because that was where we met. And what he said about Snowden, as he says in the movie, is it's very true.

He he didn't like what Snowden did. No. But and he would have punished him in the same probably the same way, but he understood the mechanics of it. Meanwhile, we got to know each other, and my producer said, let's do an let's do an interview with him because he's a crucial figure right now. Yeah.

We didn't know what was coming. You know? We didn't know about the, the, the coup in at that point. So we set up these interviews, and we were talking. The coup had just happened at that point, so he was upset.

And I, as an American, didn't really know the situation, so I was treating it like, you know, Ukraine. Okay. It's what's the big deal? I mean, it's another 1 of the countries like like Sure. Like, Georgia, I thought.

Yeah. There's still worse unpacked

countries. Yeah. And he looked at me. No. It's not a big deal for us, mister Stahl.

And he explained in the movie I think he says that on tape. And he I understand Ukraine better and better, but at first, I didn't I talked to Ukrainians. It's it was evident. I mean, it was coming. This this thing is very dangerous.

It was a it was a firecracker from 2014 on because it was a violation of at the heart of the Soviet empire of the Russian empire. That underbelly is where the invasions happened.

So it seems like we're relying now on Putin's restraint.

It's not just him. It's Russia. The if he goes if he's out and if Biden gets his wish and all these nutcases wanna remove him, take him out. Fine. Kill him.

But he's not gonna solve it. Russia is Russia. It's gonna stay loyal to what it believes in. There is a what they don't have a democratic vote, but they have a consensus. If Putin was not doing what the public the people wanted, he'd be out.

That's the way it works. It takes maybe a couple of years, more, what but it doesn't that's the way Russia works. They if the czar didn't work out, they get rid of him. You know? And they shot him too.

Remember, that's 1 of the reasons the Japanese were terrified of the Russians and why they surrendered because they didn't want the Russians to invade the homeland. That was the the a big fear. But, no. The Russian people are very strong, but they they're passive, so they they talk in certain way. You know, we believe the Moscow crowd, but the Moscow crowd doesn't talk for Russia.

It's it's a bigger consensus.

But you're making an important point, though, that we are in many ways dependent on Putin's restraint at this point. Absolutely. Because we keep and today, he just made a statement that the US keeps crossing all of Russia's red lines. And if they keep doing this, this is gonna explode. I mean, Biden, for a long time, refused to give permission to Ukraine to use the attack and missiles.

And he said that it it was be too provocative and could possibly lead to a much broader war between the United States and Russia, and he refused to do it. But like he did with every other weapon system, he finally caved in. And so Ukraine has struck Russia several times now with these attack m missiles inside of Russia, the long range army missiles. And then you got the British stormtrooper storm shadow missiles. You got the French missiles, the scout missiles.

The German ones haven't been used yet. And in response to that, Russia lower changed this nuclear doctrine and said that they lowered it and said that if Russia is attacked by a country with the support of a nuclear power, then they're gonna consider that an attack by both countries, meaning the United States and Ukraine, and both countries become legitimate targets for all of Russia's weapons, meaning nuclear weapons. And so far, then how did then how did Russia respond? With the Ureshnik missile, this brand new hypersonic medium range missile. And they it was devastating because it goes at 10 times the speed of sound, and it's a hypersonic missile, and they can't be shot down.

And they've used it once so far, but there's a warning set. They could take out Kyiv, or or at least the leadership there. They could hit the base in Poland, where wherever they want.

So just for some context, what is the difference between the bomb, the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima and the current nuclear arsenal? Like, how much more advanced are nuclear weapons now?

They are so much more advanced. In fact, Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his speech in Prague

For existing. Yep.

In 2009 calling for nuclear abolition. He's the 1 who put into process the policy of modernizing America's nuclear arsenal. It was a trade off with the senator Kyle from Arizona in order to get them to support the New START Treaty. And so what does modernizing the delivery systems and the weapons mean? Making them more efficient and more lethal.

And then Trump doubled down on that in his nuclear posture review in 2018. And so Obama said we're gonna spend a $1,000,000,000,000 over 30 years to modernize. Now it's closer to 2,000,000,000,000, and we're doing it. But not only is the United States modernizing, all 9 nuclear powers are modernizing their arsenals. And for the first time, you know, we at the peak of the Cold War, 1986, we had about 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world.

We got it down to now 12,000, but for the first time, we're increasing the arsenals. You know, we've been trying to get rid of these hellish weapons since they were first started. And, initially, even Eisenhower supported giving them to the UN and letting the UN destroy them. And Eisenhower also was the only president who's openly critical of the US dropping the atomic bombs in 1945. You know, I and he criticized

it at

the what he said he said when Stimson briefed him at Potsdam that the United States was about to use the atomic bomb, up Eisenhower wrote on a couple occasions, he said, I got more and more depressed just listening to him, but I didn't volunteer anything because my war in Europe was over. Then he asked me what I thought, and I told him I was against it for 2 reasons. Number 1, the Japanese were already defeated and trying to surrender, and we didn't need to use it. And number 2, I hated to see our country be the 1st to use such a weapon. The US had 85 star admirals and generals in 1945.

7 of the 8 are officially on the record saying the atomic bombs do the militarily unnecessary, morally reprehensible, or both. And the the other the 8th was Marshall who said that the Soviet invasion alone would likely leverage the, Japanese into surrender by itself. So they all knew that the atomic bombs were necessary. Truman knew it as well as anybody. When he went to have lunch with Stalin at Potsdam on July 17th, he goes back and writes in his journal, said Russia Stalin's will be in the Jap war by August 15th.

Finny Japs when that occurs. He writes home to his wife, Bess, the next day, said the Russians are coming in. We'll end the war a year sooner now. Think of all the kids who won't be killed. He knew it.

He refers to the intercepted telegram on July 18th as the telegram from the Jap emperor asking for peace. They knew that the Japanese were defeated.

And if there had been an invasion, what was the estimate of casualties? The original 1 from Marshall?

The original 1, they were talking only, like, 20,000, and then the highest 1 for the original, the NOLA Gay exhibit that we could find was 46,000 Americans who'd be lost. But in his memoir, Truman says, I was told by Marshall that we could lose a half 1000000 American boys in an invasion. It's a myth. I mean, that's but that's just what kids

are taught. Schools. And then Bush brought it up too.

H w Bush said millions. We could lose millions. That's how we calculated

this mission by Truman. These presidents

Right. They're retroactive justification. Yeah. So do you think, that you know, you you said the world's nuclear arsenal has dramatically declined.

That's gonna be increasing now.

But do you think and that decline is, of course, at the end of the Soviet empire 91. Do you think that all of those warheads were accounted for? Are we certain that they were destroyed?

I don't have any evidence that they weren't. Okay. So, but I I mean, I've heard speculation I have heard about that. Yes. But I I I don't know that there are any out there.

Breaking news. Trump intends to nominate Kash Patel to serve as the FBI director.

The level of corruption in Washington, DC was not

wholly new to me,

but I also didn't expect it at that level.

Is it your expectation though that Kash Patel will pursue investigations against your political enemies?

If they were crooked, if they did something wrong,

if they, have broken the law.

Comey, the former deputy attorney general of the Department of Justice literally hijacked the system of justice. And at the time, of course, we didn't know this, but he was running Russia

again.

They went after me.

You know? They went after me, and I did nothing wrong.

Here's the thing that I think people need to understand. The information operation is not Mockingbird. It's everybody. How much do you think Putin worries about nuclear war?

A lot. I can't tell you. I mean, he's a cool customer as you know. He's seen a lot. He's been there for 23 years.

I mean, he knows every world leader. He's seen 6 American presidents come and go. I would say he he qualifies as a statesman and a wise man.

Yes.

And we don't pay any attention to we should. We should respect him. He has the experience. He understands the American system, how it sends new leaders in and they change the policies all the time. So he but he thinks there is a deep state and that deep state.

In the United States.

Yeah. And that and that's what he has to deal with. And that deep state is very dangerous because when we started our conversations over 3 years, it was our partners, the Americans, and I got irritated. I said, why do you keep saying our partners, the Americans? They don't express these sentiments at all towards you.

You're considered a murderer by mister Biden or and, they think you killed people, you know, that you're some kind of character out of a James Bond spy movie. They keep talking about KGB ignoring the fact that George w Bush, George h w Bush was the head of the CIA.

But everybody I know in Russia, everybody I talked to there says they wanted they wish we could have friendlier relations between the United States and Russia. They all feel that way. You know who fears nuclear weapons, nuclear bombs? Trump. Trump said recently already says, we have never been closer to World War 3 than we are today under Joe Biden.

A global conflict between nuclear armed powers would mean death and destruction on a scale unmatched in human history. That's what Donald Trump said recently. You know? So he he thinks that giving the Ukrainians permission to use the attack ends the way we are is crazy.

I haven't heard an American president say anything like that since Kennedy. Sir, so you said you're talking about Russia. You said it is a Christian culture.

What does that mean? Yeah. They're they're a strong Christian culture, very much this concept of of of, they do interesting thing. You get they go to church. They don't sit at all during the service.

They stand the whole time. It's that's serious to me Yes. If you remember going to Sunday school. Yes. So we aren't more protestant.

We're we don't we're a divided culture, and there are so many sects. There's the Jewish sect. There's Arabs. There's this. And then we're all into different things.

You know? Some people are atheists. Some people are, you know, don't know, agnostics. This, that. They feel the Russians feel that we have lost touch with Christianity and that we're moving towards a more of a satanic culture, and I can understand why.

Because we have embraced the bomb, We've embraced regime change, corruption in all these countries. We we believe in the dollar changing controlling the world. They don't see hope in our way of life. They see people who are exhausting themselves competitively and dropping dead. And, you know, our our health as Means told you in your interview Yes.

We spend more on health than anybody, and we die sooner. Our expectation that life expectancy is very low, and our quality of life is not up to the other countries. You know? Europe is better. So there's a lot of big question about America.

We say we're you know, we we see ourselves as a great country, and I think in many ways we are. And I and I'd like to see it. But I think our greatness is tied to some humility in the sense of what what we were fighting for. Abraham Lincoln in holding the country together made some of the greatest speeches and a purpose of life, but he was a very strong Christian. Remember that?

Yes. Very strong sense of god and that, you know, the grapes of wrath are marching on.

So so you think that Russia sees this as a conflict between a Christian culture and a secular culture, Ours being a

secular culture. People do. Yeah. Putin goes to church. He's he is but he doesn't sell me.

He's not an evangelist or anything like that. Yes. Yeah. No. It's, interesting, but I I you're asked there fundamentally have to be respected.

You people who really study your Russian culture love it. I've saw Americans over there. They love it. They they they read the literature. They understand the culture.

They speak Russian. It's a you don't have a Russian background. You told me your story.

Well, I've got a lot of friends who are Russian historians and Russian experts. And my friends in Russia, when we talk about religion, they say after the collapse of the Soviet Union, everybody got baptized, but nobody actually goes to church. So, I mean, they're religious in a in a different sense, and it's part of their national identity and heritage, but I'm not sure that they're believers in that way. And as you were saying, unlike the United States where we've got Catholics and all kinds of protestants and Jews and Muslims and Hindus, mean, there's they've got much more of an identity that revolves around their religious heritage.

The whole concept of what Rome I mean, Rome moved east. New con the new Rome. Mhmm. And that they were the inheritors of our empire, and that's why they fought the Turks and all that. It was Yes.

All these conflicts. But I it's interesting what's going on with Ukraine because they changed the rules in the church. They formed a new church. They're no longer orthodox Russian.

Yes. Well, they don't have religious freedom

there. And they're accusing the Russians of distorting their religion. Yeah. But just very strange. I it's so Ukraine is also this is it's a religious battle too.

They they changed everything Russian. Do you know that Zelensky didn't even speak Ukrainian? He learned it, right he learned it quickly.

Yes.

In his yeah. So they they really banned the language. They they really went against Russia. They tried to root it out. They hated rush some people hated Russians, and they they turned it into an a campaign like Hitler, a Hitler campaign of genocide.

Against Russia. Against Russia. Yeah. The the that war in Donbas started in 2014, 15. Yes.

And it maybe 16, but it got worse and worse, and it was on the in 22 when the thing blew up. They were on the verge of invading Donbas. They had a 100,000 troops on the border. The Ukrainian troops, well trained by the Americans. With all our work there, our CIA, our our advisers, we had really trained that rush that Ukrainian army.

And that was a deliberate, deliberate manipulation. We did not abide by the treaty. The treaty was intended for a piece make a a an interim peace. But as as Merkel said, the Ukrainians saw it as a way to use the time to build up their army.

Oland also said that.

To reconquer Donbas. That's what they wanted to do, and they would've killed a lot more people.

What how do you suppose the incoming Trump administration can fix this?

Well, he he announces everything so that Biden is counter moving him on every every regard. It's very dangerous. You can't say what you're gonna do in a new administration, especially this 1. Right? I it's what do you do?

I mean, how do you I don't know

how But it it this administration, much like the Biden administration, we're talking about Biden earlier, and Oliver was talking surprised by it, how hawkish Biden is. Biden's always been a cold warrior and and very much of a hawk. And he came to office with 18 top advisers from the Center For New American Security. Now these are the people like Sullivan, who are the China hawks. Many of them were the people behind the Asia pivot under Hillary Clinton and Obama.

And but Ukraine got in the way because there was China who they wanted to go after, but you and and even Rand has proposed something about a a report saying titled avoiding a long war in Ukraine because they wanted to get after China. Now the Trump people are also much more hawkish toward China and Iran than they are toward Ukraine. So I think that Economically. My my fear is that they'll successfully end Ukraine and then turn their fire elsewhere. No.

They accept that that Trump did invite Xi Jinping to come to the inaugural inauguration, and I think it is showing some signs of moderating.

Economic with with Trump. That's what I think.

Well, then transactional. So it's possible we're not gonna go that way. That's the

only hope we have, to make a deal.

Right. How make it make a deal with Iran.

What would that look like?

Oh, with that gonna have to inherit Ukraine. We're just gonna have to pay it, keep paying and paying and paying. We gotta keep it up, and somehow he'll make some kind of phony state, you know, like create, like, a Laos or Vietnam. Yeah. Kinda a half state and Well, 20% keep it alive, spend a lot about taxpayer money, and it's a front.

A front for what? For, NATO in a way. But, you know, they they won't they they Ukraine is to say NATO free. It does, and so does Georgia. Yeah.

Otherwise, it's gonna be the Russians won't accept that. Yes. We have they have to understand, why is NATO even alive? I mean, it was a defensive alliance. I don't understand.

We formed NATO because the Russians were gonna invade Europe. Is is that correct?

19 4.

Basically it. They never invaded Europe. They never could. They never had the intention to. And, mister as I said to you earlier, Kamala Harris said something so stupid.

Like, the moment they win in Ukraine, they're gonna march into Poland. It's nuts.

That's what that the whole foreign policy establishment is saying that, and I agree with Oliver. It's nuts.

Do they believe

it even defeat Ukraine? They wanna take on NATO? And this makes no logical sense at all. And for Putin, Ukraine has a special meaning and special history for Russia. Yes.

You know, and it doesn't want Poland or Romania? No.

Or I

mean, it doesn't make any sense.

He's not at all that way. He didn't do anything like that. He was in office for 23 years. What did he do? Very little in terms of expansion.

It was just just their borders, their security. That's what it's about, their security. Let me thrive. Let me build up my country economically. Let me do this.

And that's what he did with Russia. Russia did very well up until the war.

Idea that he wants to recreate the Soviet empire, he said anyone who doesn't miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants to recreate it has no brain is what

It's a good line. It's a good line.

But, you know, they are hurting their own economy again by this massive expansion of arms production. That's what brought them down in the eighties, really. They're spending 25 to 40% of their budget on arms, and now they're doing that again. So even though in the long in the short run, they're thriving economically, unlike Europe, in the long run, it's gonna hurt them. So it's very much in their interest to end this war.

It's in everybody's interest. If you're pro pro Ukrainian, what is the point of it? For example, after the attack ends, we're given permission. Everybody gave permission. I was watching CNN, and they had Bolton, and they had, Stavridis and Clark, and they all said, too little, too late, giving using the attack ems, that it's great that we're doing it, but it's too little, too late.

What these people are saying is they're willing to risk nuclear war over something that they know is not gonna make any difference for the Ukrainians anyway. Ukraine is losing. That's the reality. They can't keep up with Russia. They're outmanned.

They're outgunned. They're out strategized at this point.

In the settlement, do you think it's as simple as telling the Russians no NATO, that'll end it?

No. No. Putin wants a little bit more than that right now.

Oh, he wants to keep what he earned.

Yeah. He's gonna keep he's got 4 provinces that they said they're incorporated into Russia. So Luhansk, Curzon, and, Zaporizhzhia, and he's gonna want at least as much of them as his army controls. He's gonna want more, but their bargaining position might be they might give up the parts that they don't control and for, no, arms no foreign arms and soldiers in Ukraine, no NATO in Ukraine, and a lasting peace. I don't think they want it.

The west says, oh, it's gonna be temporary, and then they're gonna just start it up again when they're ready. This has been a terrible war for Russia as well as for Ukraine. And if you're sympathetic to Ukraine, the last thing you want is gonna see this continue because they're only losing more. They're only in a weaker position, and their young men are getting not so young men are getting killed at incredible numbers. So if we stop it a year from now, what's gonna be different?

Russia's gonna have more of Ukraine. There'll be more Ukrainians dead, more economy destroyed on both sides, more Russians dead. This is an an a horrible war But

that was the everybody. America was fine with that. That's what they said. Weaken Russia.

Weaken Russia. Weaken Russia.

And build up our armaments industry.

Yes. The big 5 military contractors are doing great.

So there was a point in American history when the congress considered banning war profiteering.

Yes.

When did that happen?

And what happened?

1934. 1934.

Gerald Nye Yeah.

It was a great

the Nye Committee hearings in the senate were an extraordinary moment, and it was a reaction to World War 1. Because while the you know, what, Wilson said, we want a 1000000 volunteers. Well, they got 73,000 because Americans have been watching the World War 1 in Europe go on for 3 years. They saw the trench warfare. They saw the poison gas.

It was a horrible war, and so but very few Americans wanted to volunteer, so we had a draft instead. But afterwards, in the 19 twenties, going back to Hollywood, they had a lot of fabulous movies about World War 1 that were passionately anti war. Movies like the big parade, wings, all quiet on the western front, and the the novels, all almost all the Americans' writers were opposed to the war. And and and so the American attitude was very negative about World War 1. So in 1934, Gerald Nye proposes, these hearings and a new legislation to eliminate all profit from war.

Now these bastards are making enormous amounts of profit.

So that's such an obvious idea that your, that your national industry shouldn't get rich from war Yeah. Because that sets up an incentive for those same industries to lobby for war, which is what we do now. It's it's a self evidently good idea, it seems to me. What happened to it?

Well, then they started to go after Wilson because it was a bipartisan effort on the committee. It had front page headlines.

Who was

Gerald Nye?

Gerald Nye was a senator from Midwest. Yeah. Midwest Midwest Republican. Yep. Progressive.

There were a lot of progressive anti war Republicans Yes. During World War 1 and then afterwards in the twenties thirties.

They've been Bible experts.

1 of the greats, but there were a a lot of them then. And they were weren't strictly isolation. William Boro was was 1 of the leaders from Idaho.

Henry Henry Wallace was from Iowa.

Right. Henry Wallace was from Iowa. And and so but when they started to go after Truman, the democrats got very and then after Wilson, the democrats got very defensive, and they blew up the hearings. Even Roosevelt was supportive of what they were calling for in 1934.

So what were they calling? Public

well, there are various variants on this. 1 was to either tax everything above a $10,000 once war began. Anything that people earned over $10,000 would be taxed at either 98%

or a

100% because the DuPonts and the Morgans made Mellon's made huge profits out of World War 1, astronomical profits. And, you you know, part of the reason why we got involved in the war at all, even though the American people did not want to, was because we had lent, Morgan Banks had lent $2,500,000,000 to the allies and a 100,000,000 to the, the other side. And and so it was clear which side we were gonna get involved in. But Wilson said when he was criticized, because he ran in 1916 as a peace candidate, the slogan was we kept America out of the war. And then then in 1917, they changed the slogan to it's the war to end all wars or the war to make the world safe for democracy.

But Wilson entered it in large part because he knew that if we didn't, then the US would have no hand in the post war settlement. And he said we have to be in it so that we can shape the post war world. And he came up with the League of Nations, which could have been a good idea under certain circumstances. But his his 14 points were very progressive, but the British and French colonialists were not gonna accept it. And as Oliver said before, when the when the Soviet revolution occurred, 1 of the first thing they did is they broke in and found all the diplomatic papers, which showed the secret treaties between Russia, France, and Britain to divide up the Middle East.

You know, the problems we're talking about now trace back to then, to the to the colonialists who controlled the Middle East. And but this was going on all over the world. They had this plan. The Germans wanted to get involved in the warm part because they were late comers to the empire in Africa. They felt they've been frozen out of the empires, had the British and French and Dutch and

Portuguese all over controlling. Yeah. Wilson wouldn't

meet with Ho Chi Minh from Vietnam. Yes. Yeah.

Wilson wouldn't meet with Ho Chi Minh from Vietnam. Yes. Famous story. Yeah. Yeah.

There's an interesting play by Arthur Miller. His first play, all my sons. You ever see it? No. Yeah.

Oh, they made it very it was a big hit, before Salesman, and it was a made into a movie. But it's about war profiteering. The there there are 2 sons, and the the older son goes against the father when he finds out that the father has been making defective parts, and his brother is killed in the in 1 of the planes and crashes because they're defective, which happens, a lot more now than ever because we have such a corrupt system. They have crashes of this new f 35. Yes.

And it's the biggest boondoggle of all time. So it seems like this and that play had a huge impact. It was Broadway, 1945, 6. You know, that was that's part of the reality of wars that people make money with it, and that people knew that then at that level. And it goes on and on.

And But they want people It's gotten worse. The profiteering, Gerald Nye should come out of the fucking woodwork now

and investigate. Another play that Oliver knows that that also is critical of war profiteering was Waiting for Lefty by Clifford Odets. You know? He's I've also got various episodes about condemning the war profiteering.

But they failed to get control of the system in 1934, and

no one's tried to close, and it was overwhelmingly popular at the time. And then the Democrats reacted to these allegations against Wilson getting us into the war to help What's what's

interesting though is that, history now regards anybody who had second thoughts about the First World War and anyone who didn't want to get into another war in Europe in the thirties as pro Nazi. That is how they're isolationist. They're pro Hitler. Do you think that's a fair characterization?

You know, the kids don't even know about World War 1. Right. That's really ancient history. They hardly know about world hardly know about Vietnam. Yeah.

You know, Oliver fought in Vietnam. Oliver volunteered for combat in Vietnam. Probably the only person to drop out of Yale and volunteer for combat in Vietnam in history.

No. No. No? I think there are others.

Oh, maybe. I doubt it. But, you know, and I was an anti war activist during during that period. You know? But you you the the I was in Hanoi in January.

And it's interesting to me because I had Robert McNamara come into my class some years ago. And McNamara said to my students that he accepts that 3,800,000 Vietnamese died in the war. And I've always used that figure because it's mind boggling. But when I was in Hanoi, the Vietnamese leaders told me that now the figure that they use is 5,000,000 Vietnamese. So 1 of the 1 place that all my students have been is the Vietnam my memorial in Washington, DC, which you've been there.

And it's got 2 walls, with 4492 feet long with the names of 58,280 Americans who died. And the message is the tragedy of Vietnam is that 58,280 Americans died, which is part of it. But if you included the 5,000,000 Vietnamese, the, 1000000 Cambodians and Laotians, the Americans, the Brits, the Aussies, the Thais, everybody who died, that wall would be more than 10 miles long. And that would be a fitting tribute to the Vietnam, but it was sent a whole different message. Oliver and I are invited to Okinawa in February by the prefectural government to support the anti base movement in Okinawa.

Another story we could get into. But, the Okinawa war memorial has the names of all the Okinawans, the Japanese, the Americans, the Brits, the Aussies, everybody who died there. And that would be an anti war memorial. But what the Vietnam Memorial, sadly, as powerful as it is, is giving the wrong message, and America is always giving the wrong message when it comes to war.

So is it strange for you we touched at the outset at and as Oliver put it, the complete inversion of American politics, but you were you said an anti war protester during Vietnam, then you watched the party you voted for become the war party. Like, what what happened? What caused that inversion?

Well, the United States foreign policy has been bipartisan Yes. Throughout the cold war, really. And and so both parties have been war parties.

Correct.

But there was a strong element within the Democratic party, progressive Democrats, who were much more anti war, anti defense spending, and wanted to use that money instead for health care and education and infrastructure and the things that people needed actually help people's lives. But it's become this group think now, and even progressive Democrats, who are my friends, sound so hawkish these days that I don't recognize them with and the odd thing. So we've had this reversal. Trump ran as the anti war candidate. Yes.

Trump ran as the pro labor candidate. You know? It it it it makes no sense to those of us who grew up. I was never a democrat, but I usually voted for the democrats because they were more progressive than the republicans. But at this point, you've got 2 war parties, although there's a stronger faction in the Republican party at this moment, who are at least making sense about the nuclear threat and about Ukraine.

But what I mean, what caused that? How did Liz Cheney wind up campaigning with Kamala Harris?

Uh-huh. And it backfired, and it was stupid. And, you know, what really hurt, Kamala with the young people was the unquestioning support for Israel. I saw with my students. They despise the Democrats.

Gaza is a big issue for this generation, and they see it every day on or they were seeing at least for a while on television. And the stories you know, every day, they were digging out babies from under the rubble. It was horrible to watch, and it was worse if you traveled in other parts of the world. They were even more graphic and explicit than they were in the United States. This is what my kids were watching.

My students were watching, and they were so disgusted with the Democrats for keep on feeding this Israeli war. I mean, I would say that most of my students were pretty horrified by the October 7th attack that Hamas made, And I know I felt very strongly too.

Me too.

That that mean you know, I I know that they've been badly treated for a long time, the Palestinians, but what happened on October 7th is unacceptable, unforgivable. Fair. And I can understand why there was a strong reaction. But the Israeli response, we're talking like, you know, for 911, people being ready to do something. They had already been brutalizing the people in the West Bank.

Gaza had been an open air prison for for years already. And so the Israeli response is so disproportionate. It's so horrific for those of us who have different history and experience with Israel to see what Israel Israel has turned into now, without any almost no protest against this brutalization of an entire people. Whether you consider it genocide or just a slaughter, it's it sickens 1. And that's what I found in my students, and the young people did not vote.

I mean, it's for the first time, Trump got a majority of young voters, and it wasn't just young men, young women also.

Well, people like me followed Robert Kennedy too. I followed Robert to, to Trump's camp. Yes. Not that I was Robert was, I was the medium. Yes.

He's I I like what he's saying, and I hope he does it. I hope he achieves it. Whether Trump keeps his word with him, we'll see. I I think he will.

Do you know others in Hollywood who did the same?

Yeah. I think there's a lot of people who went with Kennedy. I think a lot.

To Trump?

Yeah. Amazing. Did they talk about it? For Kennedy so their vote canceled out. You know?

Yeah. But they they were not gonna In

California, he was Kennedy was on the ballot, but, he's asked all his people to vote in swing states for Trump. Anyway, I like people who are shaking up the system, who are asking questions, and the media is very, very hard on these people. Very hard. Yes. It's like dissent is not allowed anymore.

This is not the American way.

Do you think he'll be able to do it? Trump will be able to bring reform?

Why not? If he's willing to break with some of the pharma companies and some of the, and that's gonna be hard because of money, but who knows how it works? Sometimes Trump's a he's a he's a idiosyncratic candidate.

Yes.

He knows that he is. He's a he's a he's a I don't think he's a 1 shot. I think there's there'll be I think Vance will inherit, and people like that, they will inherit that. What do you think of Vance? Well, I I think he'll do what Trump wants.

You know, I think that's important. There's gotta be some change. If there's no change in this world where it's America cannot continue on this course. It cannot. And it knows it.

It knows in its gut. You know it. I do know it. Yeah. And you're right.

Be but change is good. Change is good.

And and, you know, I see with my students. You know what they lack now? They're very critical. They're very smart, analytical. There's no utopianism.

Yeah. So many of the young people think that the world that they've inherited is what the is all there is gonna be, and they don't have any late the sixties generation. Oliver and I were part of the sixties generation when you were too young, but, not even born. But, you know, the sixties generation had a vision of making a better world.

Yes.

And that informed everything we did, and we would jokingly refer to what we're gonna do after the revolution. You know? But we did have a utopian vision for how human beings could live differently. Young people now are are even much more ready to critique the system at its roots than we were back then. We were just learning about what it meant to critique the system, but we had a hope and a belief that the future could be that much better.

And I don't you know, I I I think kids now see it that maybe it could be different, but they don't have a

this that kind of burning vision that we could make a better world. So last question that you both, I think, can answer, in an informed way. I'll start with you, Peter. History and its uses. It does seem like we're in a moment where people are at least open to reassessing their interpretations of what happened, particularly in the last 100 years, 20th century.

Do you think that 50 years from now, will there our grandkids will be reading a different version of history?

50 years from now? Well, if they should start with all of her, my book. This is the earlier edition, the untold history of the United States. You know, this 1, the 2012 edition had was about 750 pages. We put out an updated edition in 2019, and now it's over 900 pages.

People really should read it and watch it because it's got so much history that people don't know. I was talking about the ignorance about World War 2. Well, I did an anonymous survey with college students, all of whom were a students in high school, and and I asked them how many Americans died in World War 2. And the median answer I got was 90,000. So they're only they're only up by 300,000, so they were in the ballpark.

I asked them how many Soviets died in World War 2. The median answer I got was a 100,000, So they're only 27,000,000 off. Right? These are smart kids, and they know nothing. They couldn't understand World War 2.

They couldn't understand the Cold War. They couldn't understand what's going on in Ukraine unless they know the history. This is why Oliver and I did the untold history of the United States to begin filling in those blank. Tulsi Gabbard was interviewed by The New York Times in 2019, and they asked her what the big article. What what podcasts do you watch?

She says, I don't wanna talk about podcasts, but I just finished watching the untold history of the United States. And everybody should watch it because it fills in those blanks in the history that nobody knows, that we never learn about in this country. You know? And so 50 years from now, it depends, really, because it's going on in Japan. Oliver and I wrote an article after 1 of our troops in Japan called Partners in Historical Falsification, the United States and Japan.

You know? It's going on Russia. It's going I mean, everywhere, people try to sanitize, whitewash their history on the assumption that if people know true history, then they're gonna rebel and want something different and something better. Because if anything, history teaches you that what is this now is not what has to exist or what should exist, that human beings can create a much different world. And that's what the lesson of it.

So it's not just to learn the past for the sake of the past. It's to learn the past so you can shape a better future.

Of course.

It's it's And that's what we're that's what Oliver and I

Most reliable guidepost to the future. So, I mean, do you think we were talking about JFK, and when it came out 30 years ago, you were roundly mocked. You were no longer mocked. People see it as likely at the very least.

So Yeah. I think so.

It seems that way.

They they much more accept it.

Yeah. So do you That was

the critics. The public loved that movie.

Oh, I know.

Yeah. It did well. Did very well. Our prize really well.

And it led to the assassination records review board.

A 3 hour, 6 minute movie. Right?

It led to the assassination records review board

Yes.

Which is why so many documents have been

why I did this documentary that I want you to see, read this, revisited. This is about the assassination records review board. They did good work. They didn't do everything, but they did some very good work and brought out new facts that we that are in this.

So why aren't why are the intel agencies still

holding on? Trump had a shot in 2016 did. And he blew it. He got pressure From Pompeo? Pompeo and those guys, and then Biden killed it.

And Biden, know what he was doing. This is a very bad action he did. He's undercutting congress, but they've been doing that for years anyway.

So so why why are they so intent on keeping the

Well, there's obviously some bullshit in there. Yeah. Obviously. I mean, I'm not saying there are those that they the who killed them names, but the we should know more about those CIA guys. There's no files on them.

Yes.

What was what what was, Angleton up to? That's a big deal, James Angleton, the counterterrorism chief. What was, Phillips, Dave Phillips, David Phillips up to? He was a very important factor in the Latin American operation from Guatemala on. He he was the handler for for Oswald, and Clay Shaw is in there.

There's a bunch of people that are the fellow for Giovanides, the more that's chasing, George Giovanides. He's he's he's dirty all the way. He was in from the beginning, and they covered it up at the time. They they brought him back as as a witness for the HSCA. Anyway, these oh, and Harvey, Bill Harvey.

I think we he needs to be checked out.

If you had to guess as to why they're holding these documents 60 odd years later, what would it be?

I you know, they they they they they declare everything a secret. Everything, practically. It's just it's it's standard now.

Massive classification. We need more transparency.

Yes. It's it's a it's a habit that it's like a dog peeing on a hybrid hybrid. You know? It just goes on and on and on. I don't understand.

If there's names and stuff, they they redact it. They redact it. So I'm not looking to government, but I am looking to honesty. That's what I'm looking for. And these bureaucrats in the government, how do they feel?

What do they feel about their lives? Are they working for us, or are they working for secrecy? The people have not been dealt with honestly, and we know that. I think Americans know that. I think Americans are very cynical about the government.

Which is part of the reason why we're hoping that Trump will pardon Ed Snowden and Julian Assange. Yeah. Good point. Oliver made a great movie about Snowden. You've met with Snowden.

Yes.

You know? And what he did was a great service to America, and he exposed the mass surveillance that was going on of all of us. It was a wake up call. Yes. He should be lionized.

Dan Ellsberg was 1 of my closest friends, and Oliver knows Dan also. And, you know, and and Dan was facing a 115 years in prison for releasing the Pentagon Papers, but he said it was worth doing it even though he thought there's only a little chance it could end the war or affect the end of the war. He wanted to get out this history, and for that, he was vilified and gone after by Nixon. I mean, that was really the best thing they had on Nixon was the break in the Dan's psychiatrist office and the Yeah. The plans to try to, you know, kill effectively kill him, compromise him.

You know, but Dan ended up, by the end of his life, and what he spent most

of

his life warning about was the nuclear threat. You know? And and the end of his life, he was getting even the New York Times and everybody else was treating him much like what he deserved to be treated, like, was a hero. And I'm hoping that Trump will understand that and pardon Ed Snowden as quickly as possible.

And Julian Assange.

And Julian Assange. Yeah.

Well, he has

Assange is at least, you know, got some measure of of freedom at this point.

But He was commuted. Yeah. He plea he pleaded at 1 charge.

Yes. But but he can't come here. Gentlemen, thank you both very much.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to Tucker Carlson Show. If you enjoyed it, you can go to tucker carlson.com to see everything that we have made, the complete library. Tuckercarlson.com.